


Bless the Broken Road

by captainamergirl



Category: All My Children
Genre: Alternate History, F/M, uc couple
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-25 20:20:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18170987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainamergirl/pseuds/captainamergirl
Summary: All the detours along the way led to this...





	1. Chapter 1

**Part 1**  
 ** _October 2008 -_**  
  
Jamie Martin knew that he should have come back to Pine Valley sooner but it just never seemed like the right time. There had always been a million other things that he would rather be doing. Maybe he was running from his past, like his grandmother Ruth had once told him that he was. Maybe he didn’t want to face reality. Maybe he had just wanted an escape from this oppressive, gossipy little town…  
  
Whatever it was that had driven him away, he didn’t relish returning now. As he pulled his car up in front of his dad’s place – a place that he didn’t even recognize (it would never be home), he let out a long, soft sigh. He popped open the car door, thinking about how he was going to meet his sister for the first time. Well, meet Kathy again knowing she actually _was_ his sister this time.   
  
This of course made him think of _Her_. Julia. The woman he felt like he had loved more than any other in his short life. The woman he had broken when he refused to give her children and had then left town. How hard would it have been to stick around? To give her those dozen babies she had craved- or even just one of them? How hard would it have been to put himself out there and not be a selfish bastard? It would not have been difficult at all and now she was gone.   
  
_Forever._  
  
Maybe he could have saved her, protected her from her deadly fate but he would never know now and he had yet to even cry about it. Definitely had not allowed himself to feel the pain and guilt and the sadness of the loss. Not until now.   
  
Now tears pooled in his wide blue eyes as he had pushed open the car door and started to climb out. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, he realized that he just could not do this. Face his family. Face the whole world. At least not right now. He had to somehow make peace with the past first.   
  
He climbed back into his Jetta and sped off before his father ever knew he had been there at all.  
  
XoXoXo  
  
Greenlee Smythe Devane would have done almost anything at this point to convince her husband Aidan that she was no longer in love with her ex, Ryan Lavery. Aidan had left her and she knew there was no going back but she’d never known when to call it quits so she would at least try one more time to get through his thick British skull. She loved Aidan, she did; she just needed to focus on that and nothing else.  
  
She walked up the front steps of the grand manse known as Wildwind and pressed down on the doorbell. She waited on the porch, silently praying that he would open the door. He had moved back there a week and a half ago after he had overheard her and Ryan kissing. Yes, overheard. Or assumed he had when he planted a listening device in Greenlee’s earring. That sounded like some asinine move in a spy movie or a cheesy soap opera but it had been real and it had happened. At the time, Greenlee hadn’t known whether to slap the shit out of Aidan or ask his forgiveness for kissing his mortal nemesis. She had been undecided because she was so angry but now she was ready to do the latter. Ask for his forgiveness and beg him to come back home where he belonged.  
  
She bounced around anxiously on the balls of her feet as she waited for Aidan to open the damned door. After standing there for five minutes and repeatedly shoving her acrylic nail down on the bell, she knew no one was going to open the door.  
  
With a sigh she turned up the collar of her black fur-lined jacket and started to turn and walk back to her car when she heard the rumble of an engine just up the road. Aidan. It had to be Aidan. She broke out into a little smile and crossed her arms to wait for him. When she saw the dark car pull into the driveway, she raced over to it. “Aid-" she started to say but seeing who it really was, the response died on her tongue.   
  
Jamie Martin, appearing older and more reserved than she had ever seen him, looked at her as he climbed out of his car. “Hey,” he finally spoke in a soft voice. “I take it you were expecting someone else ...”  
  
She just sighed and tried her best to conceal her disappointment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part 2**  
  
“No, you are not the one I was expecting to see,” Greenlee admitted, a little crisply.  
  
“Oh, yeah well, sorry,” Jamie said but to her ears, he didn’t sound the least bit apologetic.   
  
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “Can you let me inside?”  
  
“Is that any of your business and yeah, I guess so. I’ve still got the keys to the palace,” he said wryly, but quietly, and without a trace of humor in his voice.  
  
Greenlee sighed. “Where did you get them?”  
  
“I used to live here,” Jamie answered with a simple shrug that still managed to convey to Greenlee that he was carrying the weight of the world on his broad shoulders.   
  
“Oh?” Greenlee said. “Aidan did too for awhile. I guess there is a caretaker here looking out for the place ever since Julia died-” She broke off when she noticed the stormy, almost-dangerous look in his eyes. For godssake, what was his problem?  
  
She noted that he appeared to have aged at least ten years since she saw him last. There were dark rings under his eyes and she wanted to recommend a natural concealer for them. He wasn’t in a jovial mood, most obviously, so she didn’t think she should press her luck.  
  
Jamie brushed past her and went toward the front door, pausing on the stoop briefly. He looked up at the huge manor with a mixture of wariness and reverence. His hand shook a bit as he unlocked the door and slowly pushed it open to allow Greenlee to walk through.  
  
She was struck immediately by how cold and dreary the place both looked and felt. She remembered fondly the nights the place was lit to the ceilings with crystal for one of Edmund Grey’s soirees. Soirees he had thrown in memory of his thought to be deceased wife, Maria. Later Maria turned up very much alive and ironically, it was Edmund who had later died, murdered by Ryan’s crazy ass brother, Jonathan Lavery.   
  
“So much death …” She murmured.  
  
“Yeah, too much,” Jamie agreed, quietly walking over to the dusty liquor cabinet and pulling open the doors. There appeared to be alcohol of every brand and from every foreign land in there. Greenlee watched as Jamie picked up a decanter of rum, pulling off the top. To her dismay and to her shock, he began to drink right from the bottle and she couldn’t help but think that he no longer seemed like the happy-go-lucky Jamie Martin she had once known - actually, more truthfully, had only been mildly acquainted with. He seemed haunted somehow, badly broken down emotionally.  
  
He moved over to the mantle and picked up a picture. She glanced nosily at it as he dropped down onto the heavy brocade sofa. It was a picture of Jamie and Julia smiling and looking at each other adoringly, like two people deeply in love.   
  
“So that explains it,” Greenlee said, dropping down onto the arm of the sofa opposite him.  
  
“Explains what?” Jamie asked, finally seeming to take notice of her presence.   
  
“Why you look the way I feel,” Greenlee said.  
  
“What do you mean?” he asked, taking a long swig of the rum and swishing it around in his mouth before sucking it greedily down his throat in one gulp.  
  
“You look the way I feel,” Greenlee repeated. “Unhappy. No, miserable actually … I forgot until this moment that you and Julia were together. I‘m so -”  
  
Jamie held up a slightly shaky hand. “Don’t say it,” he said forcefully. “Don’t say you are sorry for me because for one, I don’t deserve your pity and two, it doesn’t change a damn thing.”  
  
“No, I know,” she agreed. “I remember when my Leo died that all people did was say ‘sorry for your loss’ or ‘sorry you lost someone you loved with all your heart’. As if that was supposed to make it better. As if that would make the pain go away …” Her voice trailed off and to her horror, she realized she had tears springing to her eyes. It was beyond awkward and embarrassing sitting there crying in front of someone she barely knew. Or had never taken the time to get to know, actually. He wasn’t half-bad either, if a bit of a downer. Not that she could blame him. He had lost the love of his life. Greenlee had been there and it hurt like nothing she had ever felt before.  
  
Thinking about everything she had lost, suddenly made her feel exhausted and weak and she must have looked that way because Jamie promptly passed her the half-empty bottle of rum. “You look like you could use it,” he said, standing then and walking out of the room.   
  
Greenlee thought briefly about the germs Jamie must have left behind on the rim of the bottle, but took a long swig anyway.   
  
XoXoXo  
  
Jamie walked out the kitchen door of Wildwind, in a hurry to escape the millions of cloying memories that surrounded him. Memories of he and Julia in better times, and even worse times, but what had been important was that they had shared those memories together until he made the biggest mistake of his life and walked out on her.  
  
“I’m sorry, Julia,” he murmured to the wind as he walked out into the quickly darkening day. He could see dark storm clouds gathering in the sky at a rapid rate and the wind seemed to have picked up in extreme speed. Still, he kept walking along the garden path until he reached the stables where he heard the animals stomping around anxiously in their stalls. He figured the sudden, dramatic shift in the weather had them all riled up.  
  
He noticed Julia’s favorite horse, Shadow, in the corner stall and he approached the horse, reaching out to touch his long, dark mane. He nearly lost his hand in the process.   
  
“What the hell?” he snapped as he noticed the big gash in his hand that was oozing blood that trickled down his fingertips and off to puddle on the ground.  
  
He turned around, hoping to find a dry, preferably sterile cloth, to wrap his hand in but could not find one. He did however notice the windows begin to rattle in their very frames. Right then, one shattered as if blown apart from the outside and a sharp shard of glass burrowed in his cheek. "Dammit!” he cursed.  
  
But that was not the least of his worries because as he looked out what had once been a window, he saw a very large cloud of dust and grime, a twister, carrying a very large plank of wood right in his direction. Before he could duck, it had smashed right into the building, splintering the very walls as if they were made of nothing more than graham crackers.   
  
He managed to duck into the corner just in time to avoid being crushed underneath the huge plank board. He knew he had to get back to shelter but he hated to leave the animals behind. Still, as usual, he felt helpless to stop fate. He pulled himself to his feet and started running out of what was left of the stables like hell itself was on his tail - and it might as well have been.   
  
He made it to the main house and threw open the door just as it too splintered down the middle. He ducked to the side and it landed with a crash against the opposite wall.   
  
“What the hell is going on?” he heard Greenlee screech over the intense blowing wind and through his muddled thoughts.  
  
She was standing in the doorway, dark blonde hair whipping around her face, and looked as panicked as he felt.   
  
He immediately strode over to her and grabbing her by the waist, pulled her up into his arms. He then carried her towards the basement door.


End file.
